Falling
by DragonyPhoenix
Summary: You remember that episode where, after achieving perfect happiness, Angel loses his soul? Well, there's always been something that bugs me about it. "Bugs!" I said "Bugs". *cracks up laughing* Really a crossover with the old Warner Brothers cartoons, but that wasn't an option.


He fell. Angel died as he fell. Arms shot out at the last minute, smashing hands against cold, hard concrete. The grittiness grounded him as his thoughts soared free. He hadn't felt this good in decades.

He heard a lighter flare to life. The underlying stench of cheap perfume and sweat gave way to the sharp scent of acrid smoke. A voice asked after him, are you alright. He stood and shook away the last vestiges of conscience as the whore brought the cigarette up and inhaled. He drained her dry before she could scream and blew the smoke out through his own lips.

There was no warning. The ground did not shake. A hole merely appeared below his feet. He fell, but not into the earth. Here there was nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to taste, nothing to smell. He'd fallen into a void.

He looked up without knowing why. In that complete and utter darkness he found a black he could see, a figure falling toward him. Colors appeared, not just black but white and red and brown. The figure slowed as it came closer until they were falling together. It's face was white against the black fur. It wore red shorts with gold button and large brown boots. But no, it couldn't be. Cartoons didn't fall out of nowhere. When it spoke, he heard that trademarked high-pitched voice. "Looks like you're having some trouble there." Angelus grabbed at it, but the mouse's skinny legs were just out of his reach.

Behind him, Angelus heard chewing. Flecks of orange flew past him. When he grabbed one out of the air, it turned out to be a carrot, a cartoon carrot. He knew who was behind him before it spoke. "Eh, what's up, Drac?" Angelus' arm shot out as he turned, but the rascally rabbit was also too far away to grab.

"I'm not Dracula."

"Looks like he fell into a plot-hole," the mouse said.

"Eh, that wasn't a plot-hole. Someone thought it'd be amusing and decided to ignore the logical inconsistency."

They were, all three of them, still falling. Angelus, starting to wonder just what kind of hell this was, spoke, hoping that playing along would give him something to work with. "What inconsistency?"

He looked at the rabbit, but it was Mickey who spoke. "By sucking the blood out of her neck you also breathed in the smoke she'd sucked in?"

The mouse's words tore through Angelus' brain like a sledgehammer. He could almost hear it bouncing around inside his skull but the words drowned it out. They were right. That couldn't have happened. He couldn't have drunk down the smoke. He thought about Drusilla and wondered if this was how she had felt all the time, as if reality were crumbling to dust around her.

When he turned his attention outward, the rabbit was speaking. "Not that we care, mind you. We're cartoons. What's it matter to us if your world isn't logical. But here's the thing. If your universe doesn't have a certain consistency, the viewer isn't going to accept it. Take your death for instance."

What was that? "My death?"

"Well sure," Bugs said. "Hitting the ground won't kill you, if there were any ground to hit that is. Mickey or I could stake you …"

"Sure we could," the mouse interrupted.

"But it wouldn't be consistent. It's just not something we'd do."

"Beheading would work," Mickey added.

"Sure, if we could get Elmer mad enough at him." A flash of brown fell from above, pausing just long enough for Angelus to identify it as a befuddled Elmer Fudd before it continued down past them. "So much for that," Bugs added.

"Why kill me at all?" Angelus asked.

"Somebody has to die," Mickey answered. "Happens in all the cartoons."

"Not like we're gonna volunteer," Bugs added.

"Maybe if it wasn't nighttime," Mickey said. Tiny dots of light appeared above them in the darkness.

"No," Angelus shouted.

The sky turned blue. "I suppose sunlight would work." Angelus' ashes spun off as if carried away by a mischievous breeze.

"That wasn't very nice of us," the mouse said.

"Eh, I've always been a stinker."

The two of them fell out of frame, leaving only a blue cartoon sky behind.


End file.
